Reviews Coming Soon

Album Review:
TBA

Monday, March 14, 2016

Album Review: S00N – Vol. 1

Atmospheric doom quartet Soon is the brainchild of
Stuart McLamb and drummer Thomas Simpson. As purveyors of indie pop,
their main project being The Love Language, it’s an unusual sidestep but
is a most welcome one and offers up listeners the opportunity to
immerse themselves in music with a metallic canvas streaked with
innovative flecks of folk and dreampop.

Although the band do find room to go low and slow, they shrug off
doom’s more contemplative concepts. Instead they choose to mix up the
delivery to try and keep the run-times down. The end result is a stingy
album length of 35 mins.

Diving in, the instant connection to Mars Red Sky is established with
opener “We Are On Your Side” revelling in its catchy vocal hook and
heavy power chord combo. Lilting through the verses they lighten the
crush and coat the music with a watery psychedelic wash.

From here, the tracks fire in and fade out leaving the unsuspecting a
little punch drunk. They act as mere tasters of something potentially
stronger. In this form, they are just fillers that lack direction. “See
You Soon” and “Gold Soul” are particular culprits of these narrowed
horizons. There is pillar, there is post, but the journey between them
is what counts and these tracks gutter like dying candles.

An album of contrasts then, the band glory in the fact that they can
stick “Glass Hours” next to “Mauveine” – one is a punky panic of
flailing arms, the other a bowed beauty of gentile folk maudling. It is
the final two-track statement that takes the biscuit though. “Take a
trip down to the feeling / Take your hands off, take it easy” intones
the three-way vocal as the band slip back into a more recognisably
ponderous vibe – one that shares a commonality with the superbly bluesy
experimentation of Orange Goblin and the bliss-kissed mind of Monster
Magnet. Then the segue from penultimate to ultimate hits and peels away
to reveal the very “abyss-gazing” that their own blurb swears blind the
band don’t do.

Soon promise to be an infuriating enigma. How can an album so replete
with half-baked ideas and antagonistic contradictions still produce
moments of genius like these?